The Human Touch - What Does It Mean in a Digital Banking World?
As people who work and innovate in the physical branch space, we constantly find ourselves being assailed by the digital world. For some time now, doomsaying pundits have been calling time on the brick-and-mortar bank and counting down the days to ultimate dissolution.
However, the physical branch persists and even millennials and younger generations still express some desire for their bank to have a local presence - although these numbers are dwindling somewhat. Even physical branches are becoming smaller and offering more digital services through advanced ATMs and tablet computers - even if they do have a couple of human employees on hand to lend a hand - and it seems likely that this pattern will continue.
The question then becomes, how, in this increasingly digital world of banking services, can financial brands maintain the human touch? How can we ensure, in a sea of chatbots, algorithms, smartphone apps, and a shrinking branch footprint, can we make sure we don't lose the main positive of the brick-and-mortar location?
The Human Touch
While the way people interact with brands has changed, the fundamentals of relationship building have not. Relationships are built on emotion and bonds between customers and brands are no different.
People like to fantasize that they selected a certain brand to do business with based on some logical assessment of the positives and negatives, but the truth is that they usually just went with their gut - the brand made them feel a certain way and they found it appealing. Then that relationship either grew based on a good experience or otherwise ended based on a bad one. Brands need to nurture that relationship in order to retain that feeling and the customer's business.
The COVID-19 pandemic has, of course, driven us even further into the arms of digital experiences, but the fundamentals haven't changed. People still mostly make decisions based on emotion and relationships.
Thanks to apps and online services, customer engagement in the world of banking has become ever more self-service orientated and transactional. People don't want to spend their precious lunch hour in a queue at the bank, and banks need to get business done with steadily fewer resources.
However, does this mean that, because of social media, apps, chatbots, etc. people no longer crave any kind of human element? No, it absolutely does not.
Personalization
One relatively simple method banking brands can employ to retain the human touch in a digital world is personalization. With personalization, banks can take the vast quantities of data generated by the digital space and apply it to creating bespoke experiences for their customers.
Banks have access to some of the most private data there is on people - their finances - and can make intelligent decisions based on factors such as in and outgoings, debt, life milestones, and more. Has your customer recently opened a joint account with a partner? Well, maybe it's time to talk about mortgages or saving accounts for a child. Have they been struggling to cover all their outgoings recently? Get in touch and see if they want to discuss debt consolidation. There is no end to the monetization opportunities which become available when you actually take the time to look at the individual circumstance of your customers, instead of just seeing them as one big homogenous blob.
And, while AI chatbots can be incredibly useful for dealing with everyday enquiries - such as the kind you'd find in an FAQ document - make sure customers can easily get in touch with a real person. So many companies make it incredibly difficult to find their customer service phone number or connect with an agent, it causes huge amounts of frustration.
The goal here is to foster customer loyalty. Loyalty is so much more difficult to achieve today when people can switch banks almost as easily as they can change brand of laundry detergent. It doesn't take much to break those bonds of trust and give your customers cause to look elsewhere. Today we are competing with digital challenger banks such as Starling and Monzo which have an entire business model built around speed and convenience. So, take advantage of the fact they don't have any physical locations and be sure to remind your customers of the benefits of the human touch.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully we've convinced you that the human touch is even more essential in the increasingly digital world than ever before and given you some ideas on how to maintain it. Physical branches with human staff aren't dead yet, so let's make sure we're fully leveraging the benefits they offer.
The inexorable advance of the digital banking world is set to be a hot topic at Future Branches 2021, taking place in December at the Hyatt Regency, Austin, TX.
Download the agenda today for more information and insights.